New York City’s $15 Minimum Wage and Restaurant Employment and Earnings

From the press release:
Five years after New York State passed the first of several laws to gradually raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour, New York City’s restaurant industry continues to thrive, with strong growth in restaurant industry employment, wages, and the number of establishments around the city, according to a new report released today by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School and the National Employment Law Project.

The report’s findings of a prospering restaurant industry are in sharp contrast to the “sky is falling” rhetoric of industry lobbyists who warned of massive job losses, $20 Big Macs, and shuttered restaurants. The report offers a first-of-its-kind assessment of restaurant employment and earnings over the entire period of the city’s historic minimum wage increases, during which the wage floor rose from $7.25 to $15.00 an hour.

The restaurant industry has the highest proportion of workers affected by the minimum wage of any industry. Researchers analyzed comprehensive employment, wage, and restaurant establishment data between 2013 and 2018 to assess the impact of the higher minimum wage on New York City’s restaurant industry. They found that during this period, New York City saw a strong economic expansion of the restaurant industry, outpacing national growth in employment, annual wages, and the number of both limited- and full-service restaurant establishments…..

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Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor

Steven Greenhouse

In an era when corporate profits have soared while wages have flatlined, millions of Americans are searching for ways to improve their lives, and they’re often turning to labor unions and worker action, whether #RedforEd teachers’ strikes or the Fight for $15. Wage stagnation, low-wage work, and blighted blue-collar communities have become an all-too-common part of modern-day America, and behind these trends is a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power.

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